It looks like circuits is all but dropped. It's a shame because I put a lotta work into this - but getting sick twice, meaning 2 missed labs and two horribly mangled exams, made doing well in the class extremely difficult. Well at least I won't need to do any finals, and I have a chance of regaining my Bright Futures scholarship.
I've been playing basketball recently, as well as lots of biking. I rode down to the Sam's Club on 13th on Friday, and then I rode down to Butler Plaza on Saturday. Pushing my limits a little is what I seem to be about recently.
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core
System: PSP
FFVII is one of my earliest memories of stellar RPGdom. I think the only one before that was Super Mario RPG. I remember watching my friend Alex play the scene leading up to and including the first boss fight, and falling totally in love with the game. I eventally went on to beat the game years later, and loved it.
Crisis Core talks about what happened before all that, and it does an amazing job of doing so. The graphics are of PS2 quality in-game, and cut-scenes are as detailed as Advent Children. Music is spot-on, as well as the voice acting. The astetics of this game are nearly flawless.
The combat is like Kingdom Hearts, only better. In combat, controls are quick and responsive, and executing commands becomes almost secondhand, despite the real-time format. Traversing the game world is your standard fare, but I never really expected anything innovative there anyway.
A really cool gameplay mechanic is the Materia Fusion system. It's exactly what it sounds like, and results in you being able to experiment with different combos and stat boosts to customize Zack to your playstyle. I personally went the spellcasting route. There's also the DMW, which is a 3-slot roulette system that sits in the corner and occasionally levels you or your materia up, as well as giving you limit breaks and restoring some HP, MP and/or AP. It feels weird at first, but ends up working well and being a fun part of battle.
The story is great, and works beautifully whether you've played FFVII or not. There are some perks to having played FFVII before, and playing this really helps you understand the latter much more. The mission system tacks on some optional gameplay, and gives you the opportunity to unlock some really cool gear and materia. The drawback to this is that the normal game becomes really easy once you've done enough missions.
The game isn't perfect, though. A minimalist can get away with spamming the "attack" command and getting through a lot of the main game. The fact that most enemies flinch when they're hit make it possible to continuously hit them to avoid ever getting attacked. This is usually rectified by having at least 2 enemies in every battle. However, this doesn't do much to help since many normal enemies will attack only sporadically intstead of making a team effort, much like in action movies where the hero is outnumbered by henchmen. The designers tried to make up for this by introducing enemies later on in the game that cast the Death spell, which is an unavoidable one-hit kill if you don't interrupt the cast by specifically targeting and hitting the enemy casting it (or you could equip one of the rare items that negates it).
Also, the odd decision to not allow the player to skip non-movie cut-scenes was a bad design choice. Sometimes you've already seen it (like if you had to continue from an earlier save), and sometimes you just don't care.
In addition, all 300 missions take place on the same 6 or 7 maps, which makes them really boring to look at after seeing the same caves for the 40th time. It's slightly mitigated by the fact you start in a variety of areas. However, these are fairly small complaints when compared to the rest of the game.
All in all, this is one of the best, if not THE best game on the PSP. Whether you're a FFVII fan or not, Crisis Core is worth checking out.
Rating: S - Rank
FFVII is one of my earliest memories of stellar RPGdom. I think the only one before that was Super Mario RPG. I remember watching my friend Alex play the scene leading up to and including the first boss fight, and falling totally in love with the game. I eventally went on to beat the game years later, and loved it.
Crisis Core talks about what happened before all that, and it does an amazing job of doing so. The graphics are of PS2 quality in-game, and cut-scenes are as detailed as Advent Children. Music is spot-on, as well as the voice acting. The astetics of this game are nearly flawless.
The combat is like Kingdom Hearts, only better. In combat, controls are quick and responsive, and executing commands becomes almost secondhand, despite the real-time format. Traversing the game world is your standard fare, but I never really expected anything innovative there anyway.
A really cool gameplay mechanic is the Materia Fusion system. It's exactly what it sounds like, and results in you being able to experiment with different combos and stat boosts to customize Zack to your playstyle. I personally went the spellcasting route. There's also the DMW, which is a 3-slot roulette system that sits in the corner and occasionally levels you or your materia up, as well as giving you limit breaks and restoring some HP, MP and/or AP. It feels weird at first, but ends up working well and being a fun part of battle.
The story is great, and works beautifully whether you've played FFVII or not. There are some perks to having played FFVII before, and playing this really helps you understand the latter much more. The mission system tacks on some optional gameplay, and gives you the opportunity to unlock some really cool gear and materia. The drawback to this is that the normal game becomes really easy once you've done enough missions.
The game isn't perfect, though. A minimalist can get away with spamming the "attack" command and getting through a lot of the main game. The fact that most enemies flinch when they're hit make it possible to continuously hit them to avoid ever getting attacked. This is usually rectified by having at least 2 enemies in every battle. However, this doesn't do much to help since many normal enemies will attack only sporadically intstead of making a team effort, much like in action movies where the hero is outnumbered by henchmen. The designers tried to make up for this by introducing enemies later on in the game that cast the Death spell, which is an unavoidable one-hit kill if you don't interrupt the cast by specifically targeting and hitting the enemy casting it (or you could equip one of the rare items that negates it).
Also, the odd decision to not allow the player to skip non-movie cut-scenes was a bad design choice. Sometimes you've already seen it (like if you had to continue from an earlier save), and sometimes you just don't care.
In addition, all 300 missions take place on the same 6 or 7 maps, which makes them really boring to look at after seeing the same caves for the 40th time. It's slightly mitigated by the fact you start in a variety of areas. However, these are fairly small complaints when compared to the rest of the game.
All in all, this is one of the best, if not THE best game on the PSP. Whether you're a FFVII fan or not, Crisis Core is worth checking out.
Rating: S - Rank
Gots to be startin' somethin'.
Yeah yeah.
This marks the beginning of something. The idea is for me to put various ideas and whatnots on the internet so that I can come back and peruse what I would think about while I was still sane. Of course, this means that if I can somehow complete college AND avoid insanity, then this will have been a complete waste of time.
Well, it's 3 in the morning, and I have a lab report due in 13 hours for a class that chances are I'll probably end up dropping. It's really frustrating that I happened to get extremely ill only HOURS before the 2nd exam for the class. It pretty much sealed my fate right there. At this rate, I'll be out of college moneys.
I'm unsuccessfully pursuing some female options. Kayla is cool but I can't seem to schedule a time to hang out with her. It seems she's either avoiding the question and /or not answering the phone when I call. We chat on the internets, though. If this falls through as well, especially after that Vanessa B.S., I'm going to look into chopping my balls off so I can continue through life without the weekly dissapointment / lonelyness.
I just got finished with taking Pretnizone or something like that. It was a steroid that worked to cure aforemented sickness. I gained over 10 lbs. of fat during that time, and it's become a real bitch to try and get rid of it. Especially now, when I'm being stressed to hell by a combo of deadlines and self-destructive delaying (kind of like this). It's funny how I come up with the coolest ideas when I'm not supposed to, but when I have free time, it's totally different.
Anyway, lets see how long this will last. I have a LiveJournal account open that has sporadic periods of self-interest, but for the most part it's been badly neglected. Hopefully using a site that doesn't have the stigma of immaturity attached to it will give me less of an excuse to type my thoughts into a type-y box.
This marks the beginning of something. The idea is for me to put various ideas and whatnots on the internet so that I can come back and peruse what I would think about while I was still sane. Of course, this means that if I can somehow complete college AND avoid insanity, then this will have been a complete waste of time.
Well, it's 3 in the morning, and I have a lab report due in 13 hours for a class that chances are I'll probably end up dropping. It's really frustrating that I happened to get extremely ill only HOURS before the 2nd exam for the class. It pretty much sealed my fate right there. At this rate, I'll be out of college moneys.
I'm unsuccessfully pursuing some female options. Kayla is cool but I can't seem to schedule a time to hang out with her. It seems she's either avoiding the question and /or not answering the phone when I call. We chat on the internets, though. If this falls through as well, especially after that Vanessa B.S., I'm going to look into chopping my balls off so I can continue through life without the weekly dissapointment / lonelyness.
I just got finished with taking Pretnizone or something like that. It was a steroid that worked to cure aforemented sickness. I gained over 10 lbs. of fat during that time, and it's become a real bitch to try and get rid of it. Especially now, when I'm being stressed to hell by a combo of deadlines and self-destructive delaying (kind of like this). It's funny how I come up with the coolest ideas when I'm not supposed to, but when I have free time, it's totally different.
Anyway, lets see how long this will last. I have a LiveJournal account open that has sporadic periods of self-interest, but for the most part it's been badly neglected. Hopefully using a site that doesn't have the stigma of immaturity attached to it will give me less of an excuse to type my thoughts into a type-y box.
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